


withdraw your good intent

by lavendre



Category: Natsume Yuujinchou | Natsume's Book of Friends
Genre: Community: 31_days, Established Relationship, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-22
Updated: 2019-01-22
Packaged: 2019-10-14 09:08:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,266
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17505716
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lavendre/pseuds/lavendre
Summary: Natori had always been good at jousting. Or so he thought.Or: Natori considers a betrayal, and Matoba gets some stitches.





	withdraw your good intent

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. Written for DW's 31-days community, January prompts: 21. learn how to lay me down in something other than danger other than fury.  
> 2\. This is honestly just artery clogging sappy pairing fic with no real plot, don't be fooled by the premise.  
> 3\. Not the best to come out of this challenge, but I do want to poke at an alt-ending verse for this, someday.

 

“Here. Wake up. These are abominable but at least they work.”  
  
Natori took the aluminum can from Nanase’s outstretched hand. Super Sweet Coffee!! B-Vitamin Enhanced!! it read. Nanase had a thermos of something clutched in the crook of her arm; a woman long accustomed to days of not venturing out further than her office. He could relate, vaguely.  
  
He’d collapsed face down on the couch when he’d arrived home with no intent of moving. It was only when he’d groggily checked the answering machine that he’d stumbled back out into the evening hours and smashed the elevator button repeatedly in the hopes of making it run faster.  
  
Adrenaline could do a lot for a tired person.  
  
The can of coffee was chilly against his palm. He balanced it on a knee between pinched fingers. “Are you bribing me, Nanase-san? You didn't need to.”  
  
“Maybe,” She shrugged, gray locks straying across her shoulders. “Look, I can’t stay here any longer. You’ll stay?”  
  
He turned on a withering smile. “I won’t leave without my patient.”  
  
“Good. He doesn’t need to come in tomorrow. I have business to settle with the clan that he doesn’t need to be present for.”  
  
Business, he thought wantonly, that he wasn’t privy to -- not yet at least. Would that he had a hand in any of this -- well, he was prone to bad decisions too, wasn’t he.  
  
Nanase was swallowed up by the night and so he began the arduous task of staying awake for the rest of it. Natori watched the clock, flipped through house keeping magazines, studied the hospital layout on a large map framed in glass by the exit. He went to the bathroom, walked outside to let the cold air revive him, then settled back into the plush couch to drink his coffee. It was, in fact, very sweet.  
  
He glanced up from his phone fifteen minutes later, watched Seiji walk alone down the hall and around the receptionist’s desk, talking idly to a woman with dark hair and glasses. Nanase, perhaps, had been waiting for some time without him realizing it if Seiji was released so soon.  
  
Natori waited for Seiji to notice him before he escaped the maze of magazine carts and couches and went to meet him.  
  
“Twelve,” Seiji announced blandly, taking the proffered coat from Natori and slipping it on over his shoulders.  
  
“Twelve stitches,” Natori murmured. He peered at the wad of chalk white gauze, the line of tape that edged over the bridge of his nose, holding the mass gently in place. Smaller ones peeked out from the collar of his shirt. “A new record.”  
  
Seiji smiled without humor, fingers fumbling with the zipper. “Hardly. Not from it, at least.”  
  
Natori scowled, pulled Seiji’s hands away to finish the coat himself. “Where’s your prescriptions, hmm? You have some, right? Don’t skip out on those.”  
  
“They’re being called in to the pharmacy. I’ll get them later.”  
  
“No, we’ll get it tonight--”  
  
“It’s just antibiotics. Someone will bring it around.”  
  
Someone, he mouthed. Too many anonymous faces and figures for one evening.  
  
Seiji frowned. He touched Natori’s coat at his left bicep, slid his fingers over and drew out a string of paper from his chest pocket, a long chain of white, closely folded figures.  
  
“Hey--”  
  
“What did Nanase say? Did you think you’d be coming to a fight?” he murmured. “Exaggerated the whole thing, didn’t you.”  
  
Natori carefully touched his wrist. “I thought you’d be staying overnight.”  
  
Seiji shrugged, let the paper fall back into its rightful place. “It wasn’t terrible.”  
  
_Not for you, maybe. You’re used to this._  
  
Natori placed a hand on his elbow, spun Seiji around toward the wide sweeping doors. He didn’t stumble, but there was a degree of gauntness in his body Natori knew to be exhaustion; a run around day of dodging monsters and signing paperwork had caught up with him all at once.  
  
“Sure. We’ll talk about that later.”  
  
“Later,” Seiji agreed, and they stepped out into the night air together.  


  
  
Later meant Natori spent an unnatural amount of time flossing and brushing his teeth in the bathroom before he gave up his stalling and slunk into the bedroom instead, turning out the lights as he went. Seiji was out, but stirred when the mattress bent under Natori’s weight, head turning toward him. His one uncovered eye stared through him, then closed again. A pale hand stretched out between them, demarcating the distance Natori had drawn, blurring those lines under the guise of sleep.  
  
Natori lied awake in the dark, watched the lights of the city peek through the space of their curtains.  
  
He wondered when he’d gotten complacent with being useless.

  
  
  
  
In the morning, Seiji spread a generous helping of jam on a rare slice of white bread Natori often kept stashed in the freezer.   
  
“It was the usual dance around -- it just so happened that the umbrella it picked was mine. Unlucky, is all.”  
  
“That -- does not sound like a coincidence, Seiji.”  
  
“It hasn’t learned. It’s as stupid as ever. The reality is that while the method works, it’s not without risk.”  
  
“I don’t like it.”  
  
Seiji ate his toast wordlessly. He’d taken the gauze off his face to allow the injury to air, and the skin puckered angrily around the thick line of stitches, pink and ribbed and scabbing over. It was fortunate that the youkai’s claws had missed his eye entirely, but not so fortunate for the previously untouched patch of his cheek.  
  
In this light, in the kitchen, Natori’s stomach dropped. He paused his peeling of a hard boiled egg, pieces of shell still under the edge of a nail.   
  
Seiji essentially had fishing line in his face, and they were eating  _toast_ , like it was only yesterday’s news.  
  
“What would you do,” he began wearily, resuming his task, “if I said was going to exorcise it?”  _Plink, plink._  Brown shell dropped into the cold pot of water.  
  
Seiji turned very still. He picked up his tea. “...That thought hasn’t eluded me.”  
  
“No, it wouldn’t. Would you be angry?”  
  
“Displeased.”  
  
He laughed. “Then you can understand.”  
  
“Don’t be ridiculous.”  
  
“There’s no way attempts haven’t been made--”  
  
“All unsuccessful, usually ending in a large number of deaths. There’s a reason this game goes on beside the obvious benefits.”  
  
“Were those failures by Matoba clan members, or outsiders with no connections to speak of?”  
  
“Natori--”  
  
“You’re not replaceable, you’re not bait for it,” he snapped. “Don’t act like you’re immune to all of this. Doesn’t it bother you?”  
  
Seiji shut his mouth with a click. “I am -- aware -- of your feelings on this matter.”  
  
“Then consider them,” he muttered. “Talk to me about it.”  
  
He turned on the faucet to let the hot water thaw his hands.  
  
Neither said anymore, but at least Seiji knew he wouldn’t take kindly to being left in the dark.

  
  
  
Five days later, Shuuichi came home to find Matoba sprawled on the couch, back to the wall. Paperwork was abandoned at a desk in their shared work room and an empty mug and some mail decorated their sparse looking coffee table. Mostly junk, their monthly electricity bill, a couple of invites Natori wouldn’t accept until his agent saw them. Natori thumbed the paper before turning away again.  
  
Matoba’s stitches had been pulled, and the skin was red and irritated and gave the impression of railroad tracks.  
  
He smoothed a thumb over Seiji’s jaw bone, got his legs snatched up by two stretched arms for the move and was forced to either sit or topple sideways. He sat.  
  
“You know,” Seiji muttered into his hip a minute later, “we could possibly compromise.”  
  
Natori’s mouth twitched.  _You would never, don’t lie._  “Sure. You start telling me the dates for these things and I’ll plan on accompanying you.”  
  
“What do you think I would do if your pretty face got scratched up, hmm?”  
  
“We’d match. Don’t think it wants my eyeball, though.”  
  
Seiji squeezed Natori’s knee, shook it firmly. A nice looking bandage peered out from the edge of his sleeve. “You’re being deliberately ridiculous now.”  
  
“Better than lying to one’s self.” He stretched the wandering arm across his thigh, rolled up the gray sleeve to measure the length of wrapping. From wrist to elbow, beige lines wound upward. Today’s affair, then. “Are your shiki and clansmen so incompetent?” Natori sighed. “I’m getting embarrassed for you.”  
  
_Everything has to balance out somewhere, doesn't it?_  
  
Seiji yanked it back, suddenly tense. “They’re fine.”  
  
“That is not the definition of that word.” Natori bent down and kissed his mouth, relieved the harsh line across his lips. Seiji’s eyes considered him after, slanted away to the balcony doors, the late afternoon light sleepily flowing through. He was honoring the thought at least, even if not openly. Natori knew a losing expression when he saw one. He knew he was adding insult to injury. He would do it if it meant he could win.  
  
“Don’t leave me behind again. That’s all I’m asking.”  
  
“...I’ll see what I can do, but no guarantees,” he returned stiffly. “You don’t need to be involved.”  
  
“I already am, so let me.”  
  
“You’ll do something moronic.”  
  
His lips twitched. “I’ll hold back.”  
  
“Liar.”  
  
Natori stroked Seiji’s hair before he gave in and stretched out beside him along the cushions, wrapped the words in a ring of promise around his finger, black locks flowing smooth and easy over his hand. Seiji watched him, exhale warming Natori’s throat, a movement like giving in, almost. He’d chase it.  
  
Talking, Natori supposed, was all that could really be done to convince him.

 

  
  
  
Twenty two days later, Natori was granted the extreme satisfaction of terrorizing a monstrous blob with an oil-paper umbrella in tow. He caught the youkai off guard with a timed spell, threatened it with charms curling around his arm like writhing, decorative streamers. The monster didn’t like it when its prey took the offensive; it became cowardly when it realized the ball had shifted courts. Matoba mocked it for missing, the injured party was attended to by Nanase, and in the meanwhile, Natori stood guard like some loyal dog while the chaos settled and dispersed. It was jarring, but he got his wish. He didn’t stagger in the face of it.  
  
Natori had always been good at jousting.  
  
Later, Seiji made idle threats in the apartment about his approach, shook Natori by the shoulders at his angriest, rolled him up against the back of the couch, said some crass, charging things about foolery and stupid, heroic attempts at  _chivalry, chivalry’s dead and you could have been too--_  
  
When Seiji was done blowing off steam, by the time they had finished dinner and were tiredly folding a ridiculous load of laundry so they could clear the bed and sleep, Natori smiled over a mass of t-shirts and socks at him. His face had healed and the scar left by the youkai was a clean line of tissue, raised only in the spots where the stitches had meshed his skin together again. His hair was still faintly damp from the shower, and it draped over his shoulders in silky black sheets.  
  
Seiji met his eyes; his mouth crinkled. Forgiven, then.  
  
“Thank you,” Natori said sincerely, “for including me.”  
  
Seiji folded a pair of jeans with deft hands. “You’re practically part of the clan now.”  
  
“Is that the hazing ceremony you put new employees through? I always wondered.”  
  
“That would clear up the crowds begging to join the clan. I might implement that.”  
  
“No,” Natori mused. “Honestly though -- I don’t think today went poorly. Do you think I scared it? Maybe I could convince it to start visiting once a year instead.” He scooped up a stack of shirts to press into the dresser, tucking the overflow in as he slid it shut.  
  
“I will retract my offer any time.”  
  
“No you won’t. I’m liable to go back on mine, then.”  _Got you._  
  
Seiji smiled pleasantly at him, then threw a pair of socks at his head.  
  
“You’re stuck with me,” Natori announced, letting smugness seep into his voice. “Until you tell me to get lost.”  
  
Seiji came around the side of the bed only to shove him down on it, upending a stack of pants, the pile of underwear. Natori laughed into his mouth, hands rucking up Seiji’s t-shirt as he crawled over the top of him, spindly hands pinning his shoulders down to kiss him properly, weight warm and entirely distracting.  
  
This is better anyway, mostly, Natori thinks. Seiji wasn’t left wanting here. It was alright. Still. Natori had pondered the thought of betrayal, what it would be like to break a curse of such magnitude.  
  
But there was also this, which makes him reconsider, the habits and traditions that keep a Matoba alive: he couldn’t curb himself to believe that Seiji wouldn’t find another youkai to promise and betray, and do it all over again, put the name back into the story.   
  
_You could be anyone. You could go anywhere,_  he believed once. He doesn’t anymore. Seiji wouldn't stand for it.  
  
But this -- this is better anyway, mostly.  
  
“ _Get lost_ ,” Seiji murmured, hand stroking along the column of Natori’s throat, other combing along the back of his scalp. His eyes were dark and heavy in his face, hard to focus on when they hovered so close to his own.  
  
Natori squinted, trying not to laugh again, meeting them head on. “No, you have to  _mean it --_ ”  
  
They didn’t finish the laundry, but Natori wasn’t upset about it.  
  
This was better. This was better.


End file.
